rock

[Steve Hoefer] pulled together a great hack for the friendless. This glove will play a heated game of rock-paper-scissors against you. [Steve] realized that the middle and fourth fingers are all that need to be monitored to decide which of the three signs you are making. He used flex sensors on the back of these fingers as an input. There is also an accelerometer to judge the three shakes that lead up to the shoot.

The small screen you see displays what the glove chose and is a hack in itself. This idea adapts from an Evil Mad Scientist project, using three sheets of acrylic etched with the different icons and edge-lit with LEDs. All of this, along with a speaker and scoreboard, connect to an Arduino. The icing on the cake? [Steve] coded an adaptive learning algorithm that observes your playing style to gain an advantage.

Anyone with children will understand the value of this project immediately. This is an Arduino controlled sound activated crib rocker. [Lars] built a custom suspension system for his baby’s crib which allows a servo, mounted to the floor to rock it gently back and forth. Ok, maybe it’s a vigorous rocking, but that’s what some kids want. At least he’s safe and moderately immobile. He had to make a custom amplifier circuit to get his microphone working with the Arduino. It seems to all work perfectly now, triggering to begin rocking when it detects the baby’s cries. This should buy them a few extra minutes of sleep until the baby is truly hungry or annoyed. You can see a video of it in action and download the Arduino code on the project page.